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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

An Agent's Inbox #8

I am seeking representation for my middle grade adventure,
TRUSTING TRINITY. I also write YA fiction and am looking for an agent who
represents both age groups.

Thirteen-year-old Trinity Bishop is about to learn a few
things on summer vacation:

*First crushes are scary in a will-he-kiss-me-and-how-do-I-do-it
kind of way.

*Telling the truth is scarier than lying in a what-if-they-don't-believe-me
kind of way.

*Aliens really exist in a they-just-kidnapped-my-crush-and-I-have-to-save-him
kind of way.

*Best friends are awesome in a stand-by-me-through-thick-and-thin
kind of way.

Trinity’s looking forward to her family cruise, especially
since her best friends, Maya and Nick, are tagging along. Exploring a tropical
paradise is sure to improve Trinity’s summer by about a thousand times, but
Trinity and her friends discover something more exotic than palm trees and soft
sand on the island. Aliens, with a busted spacecraft in need of diamonds to
power it up, are planning to raid Trinity’s cruise ship and get their
three-fingered hands on some jewels.

Using whatever force is necessary.

Trinity warns her parents of the impending invasion, but
they think she’s just fooling around. Forced to take matters into her own
hands, Trinity faces off against the aliens with Maya and Nick. When they grab
Nick and demand an exchange of the human for the diamonds, Trinity must find a
way to comply that doesn’t involve grand theft, jail time, or Nick’s abduction.
No easy feat for a girl who just started wearing a bra.

TRUSTING TRINITY is a 32,000 word middle grade adventure.
This novel is a standalone with series potential.

Thank you for taking the time to consider representing my
work. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
K.M.

TRUSTING TRINITY

If I heard the words “anal probe” one more time, I was going
to explode.

Not the guts-all-over-the-place kind of explode, but close.

When I got home from the store with my mom, I slammed my
bedroom door so hard it knocked the framed seventh grade class photo off the
pink wall. I stomped on it, flung myself onto the bed, and buried my face in my
pillow.

The door pushed open and Mom walked in. She stepped on the
broken glass and sighed.

“Trinity, forget about those boys. You know how immature
they can be.” She sat on the edge of my bed and ran her fingers through my
tangled hair. “Maya will be here any minute, and before you know it, we’ll all
be on the cruise ship having fun. Right?”

I shook my head against my pillow, suffocating myself but
refusing to look at her. Mom had no idea how I felt. She had been popular like
my older sister, Jessica.

I was just…Trinity.

The girl who lies.

And all I wanted was for people to like me as much as they
liked Mom and Jess. But Jessica ruined that by making me the target of jokes
and teasing.

The thing I didn’t get was, everyone lied. I saw it every
day at school when boys lied about who they kissed and girls lied about who
they liked and everyone lied about doing their own homework.

5 comments:

I like this query, but I'm not sure about the bullets. I love the way they're written and the way they give a sense of voice, but then when you go into the next paragraph about her looking forward to her vacation, it feels like going backwards in the story. It might just be because of the way the query is formatted here, though. Otherwise, I think you give a great setup of the conflict and the stakes.

The first 250 words are great. I want to know what she lied about before and also why she's tired of hearing the words "anal probe." Great job!

I'm very interested in this premise, but think the query letter needs some work. Firstly, I would leave the mention of YA projects until the end of the query. Start with a focus on your current work.

Second, you are writing an alien story. Yes, it's about the angst of being 13, but aliens are your hook, and right now they're kind of buried amongst everything. I think you need to make that more prominent. Your lists and stylized way of expressing Trinity's concerns is fun, but could be condensed a bit to get to the meat of the story.

The voice in the sample is really strong and fun. I'm on the fence about the "anal probe" reference. It might make more sense once I read on and got the joke, but I worry you're outside of your target audience.--If you were going for MG boys that's one thing, but girls might not be as compelled to keep reading with that kind of opener.